NY: Kingston asks state to look at passenger rail service on west side of Hudson River

The Common Council voted Tuesday to request a feasibility study on the restoration of passenger rail service on the west side of the Hudson River.

At a meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, June 2, lawmakers passed a memorializing resolution asking the state, “in coordination with relevant regional planning agencies and transportation authorities,” to fund and initiate the study to evaluate the restoration of passenger rail service on the CSX River Subdivision (West Shore Line). In Ulster County, the line is only used for freight transport.

An amendment to the resolution proposed by Sara Pasti, D- Ward 1, asked that Kingston and other municipalities on the west side of the Hudson River be represented in the study’s development and stakeholder engagement process.

The resolution said the west side of the Hudson River in Ulster, Orange, and Rockland counties “lacks sufficient public transportation, limiting mobility, and economic opportunity for residents.” Lawmakers said the resumption of passenger service on the West Shore Line “presents a unique opportunity for a new passenger rail corridor connecting the City of Kingston and other west-of- Hudson communities to New York City and the greater metropolitan area.”

Ulster County Area Transit offers over a dozen bus routes, all of which are free to ride. Passenger rail service is provided on the west side of the Hudson River by the Metro-North Railroad in both Orange and Rockland counties.

The resolution first passed the city’s Public Safety and General Government Committee after being brought to the attention of Council President Andrea Shaut by Mayor Steve Noble. Noble cited a similar resolution passed by the city of Newburgh in his push for Shaut and the council to consider asking for a feasibility study.

The closest passenger rail service to Kingston is Amtrak service from the train station across the river in Rhinecliff.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, UIster County Archivist Jonathan Palmer said passenger rail service was once common in Kingston, with four different lines operating between the late 1880s and 1950s: the Ontario and Western Railroad, the West Shore Railroad, the Wallkill Valley Railroad, and the Ulster and Delaware Railroad.

The West Shore Line had passenger service until 1958, stopping in Kingston on the way to and from New Jersey. Trains stopped at the former Union Station in Midtown, which was demolished after falling into disrepair in the 1960s.

“Kingston was just a stop on that route. It was one of many places people could get off,” Palmer said. “There are several books that detail all the stations on the West Shore, but I think Ulster probably had (around) five. There was a station in Saugerties, a station in Kingston, there was a station down in Milton.”

Palmer said the former West Shore Railroad, working in tandem with other rail lines that connected Kingston with more rural towns in Ulster County, contributed to an exchange of goods between people and communities.

“That’s something else that I think needs to be embraced is the idea that this rail service didn’t just connect the city for tourism. It connected the communities in between with one another,” he said. “That was paired with connections that allowed people to go from Kingston out into the mountains, but more importantly allowed bulk freight, agricultural produce, industrial products to move down out of the mountains, back to places like Kingston, where manufacturing was occurring and trans-shipping was occurring that utilized all that stuff.”

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